


Wandering Souls

by gisho



Category: GetBackers, R.O.D: Read or Die & Related Fandoms, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, xxxHoLic, 闇の末裔 | Yami No Matsuei | Descendants of Darkness
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-08 01:26:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5478134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Assorted variations on the theme of 'daemon'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wandering Souls

**Author's Note:**

> Assorted variations on the theme of 'daemon'.
> 
> Originally posted on LiveJournal. Once again, I blame [nekokoban](http://nekokoban.livejournal.com) for being such a wonderful enabler. None of these will make much sense if you aren't at least passingly familiar with the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, by Phillip Pullman; they all attempt to apply the concept of daemons to worlds where they do not belong in the _least_.

\--

**Tsubasa RC:**

"What the _hell_ ", Kurogane growled, and his daemon growled with him. "Where did she go?"

Fay's smile was perfectly bright as he leaned back. "I just said, Kuro-chi. I send her out to look around the neighborhood."

"And it doesn't hurt?"

Syaoran winced at the thought. This was a joke; this had to be a joke, in spectacularly bad taste; Fay's daemon was hiding in a closet and would leap out in a minute to make them all scream. His own daemon hopped down from his shoulder, shifting from hawk to wolf - her favorite form - and settling to a pose of readiness, beside Kurogane's big black Alsatian.

Fay shrugged, and waved his hand, nearly swatting Mokona. "Some people can go far away from their daemons, you know. It's not inborn. It's learned. Connections of the soul ... those can stretch across universes."

"It's true," Mokona chimed up, waggling her ears. "Yuuko has done it. Mokona saw her send her daemon all the way to Hokkaido once!" Syaoran absently wondered where Hokkaido was. Someplace far away from her shop, presumably.

Slowly, Kurogane leaned back against the wall, nodding. He was probably thinking the same as Syaoran - that this was good; that it meant Sakura had more of a chance. Syaoran remembered watching her daemon pad beside her as a soft brown cat, and wanting more than anything to per him, and remembered him in bird-form circling their heads as they walked together, and he remembered the sudden cold feeling that settled in his chest when he saw Sakura lying unconscious and bloody and her daemon nowhere in sight. Kurogane had a fist clenched as he asked, "So how do you learn it?"

Fay reached over and brushed a curl of hair from Sakura's face. His voice was as light as ever. "I hope you never have to find out."

\--

**Descendants of Darkness:**

Hisoka remembered staring out the window of his hospital room, his demon curled on his pillow in the form of a mouse, and realizing she had not changed form in days. "Is this it, then?" he'd whispered, too bleak to think, knowing only that he had been fourteen for six months now, and was overdue. "I grew up and didn't even notice?"

"No," she told him, and rubbed her nose on his cheek. "I can still change. I'm just tired."

Only when he died, ironically enough, did she take the form of a fox, and keep it. He was pleased; it struck him as dignified and appropriate. Tsuzuki, of course, thought it was cute, just like Hisoka.

It seemed the wrong sentiment from a man who carried a crow on his shoulder, until that same crow cawwed inappropriately in meetings, and tried to steal Hisoka's breadsticks, and perched on Hisoka's head as if there were no tabu on touching someone else's daemon. For a while he managed to forget that in half the world, crows were the messengers of death.

\--

**ROD:**

Most papermasters have cat-daemons. It's just one of those things. Nenene noticed it when she met the Paper Sisters; Michelle's was a Siamese, Maggie's a Maine Coon, and Anita's a sleek creature of no definate breed, but still a cat, always a cat.

Yomiko's daemon had been a tricolor calico. He had been dainty and affectionate, and purred more than most daemons. "It's always a cat," Yomiko told her. "They're a bit aloof, but very loyal, and they love deeply. You have to be able to love deeply, to be a paper-master."

The sisters' daemons spent the night piled together in a common basket, and Michelle's purred in his sleep, too.

The next day, watching the Siamese launch himself, claws out and screaming, at the mad bomber's magpie, Nenene thought to herself: Cats are predators, too. Even the sweet little calicos. Everyone forgets that.

\--

**xxxHolic:**

At first Watanuki assumed Maru and Moro's daemons were young enough to change shape and shy enough to stay hidden, as snakes or the like, inside their clothing. It was only when they refused to leave the shop that he realized they had none, and for all that he was used to daemonless spirits, creatures who looked so human and yet weren't disconcerted him.

"Don't be concerned," Yuuko told him, much later, and raised her glass. "You know it doesn't take a daemon to be happy." Her own daemon, the strange bird whose species he had never been able to place, cooed appreciatively and ruffled its long black tail.

Watanuki dropped his feather-duster and scowled. "It may not take a daemon to be happy, but humans are supposed to have daemons and they look human. Just because you dish up such RIDICULOUS things on a daily basis does NOT mean I have to LIKE them - "

"Watanuki." Her voice was sweet and quite devoid of innocence. "Tell me, what form does your daemon take?"

"Sheepdog, I know, I'm doomed to spend my life dusting - "

"And her name?"

His jaw dropped, and by the time he had looked around and decided his daemon must have hidden under the sofa to escape the dustclouds, Yuuko was gone, and by that night as he went to bed with the pipe-fox curled around his arm, he told himself it didn't matter. If something was so badly wrong, people would have noticed.

\--

**GetBackers:**

Ginji never quite understood daemons. He remembered very well that his had settled as an eagle, and Longhua's as a cockatiel, a few days before she died. The eagle had surprised him, then. A few days later it had seemed horrifyingly accurate, something so vast and predatory.

Ginji had been a little surprised when Ban's daemon turned out to be male; he hadn't thought that was possible. "He told me it was a witch thing," he explained to Natsumi, when she noticed. Natsumi blinked. "And that he'd explain later."

"That," Paul interjected, "means he doesn't know." He sniffed, and his own daemon, a lynx, threw back her head in a languorous yawn. "Nobody understands daemons, Ginji. Not even witches. Their forms don't always make sense, even though they're supposed to match us."

Ginji thought of that later on, when Himiko was screaming at them that serpents were always betrayers, that that was their nature, that Ban would never be true to anyone. He didn't say it, because he didn't think she'd listen. She had the biggest daemon he'd ever seen, a black panther she could have ridden if she'd wanted. It looked as if it wanted to maul something - Ban's daemon for preference, but Aesclepius was curled around Ban's neck as usual, out of reach, and so the panther leapt for Ginji's daemon instead. He felt the claws scrape over his chest, and decided that Himiko's made perfect sense.

\--

**GetBackers 2:**

"Two tricksters," Emishi said when they got off the bus. "Very appropriate."

"That's not what most people think of a raven, you know." A dark look passed across Amon's face for a moment, but it was almost instantly replaced by a sunny grin. "Aaah, but you know, ravens were the trickster in the north of America, and coyotes in the south. Does this mean _you_ get the accent?"

Emishi stifled a bark of laughter; his daemon, padding beside them, didn't bother to stifle it. "We can share," he choked out. "S'enough for both of us. Not like anyone over there would recognize it. Really," he confided, leaning closer, "I'm just glad your daemon wasn't a roadrunner."

\---


End file.
